Why Can't I Get Well? (Part 4)
How People Get Well

Dr. John Sarno has a fascinating approach to chronic pain. (Although I don't totally agree with it.)

He takes a purely psychodynamic view of chronic pain, including the chronic pain of fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue. In other words, he contends that if you have a desire that threatens your deepest beliefs about the world, it will not come to the surface of your awareness.

Your instincts don't even give you the opportunity to make a conscious choice about the matter. They just dispose of that conflicted ball of thought and emotion by automatically banishing it to the realm of your subconscious mind.

And remember what Dr. Candace Pert says:

Your body is your subconscious mind.

Farfetched? Dr. Sarno has thousands of documented cases of clients who rid themselves of excruciating levels of chronic pain simply by listening to his series of lectures. And if the lectures didn't work, trips to his specially trained psychotherapists often completed the job. And yes, this includes the chronic pain of fibromyalgia patients.

Dr. Sarno is adamant that to be successful, his patients must acknowledge only suppressed psychological conflict as the cause of the physical pain. They must banish the idea that anything they do with their physical body can affect the pain.

And yet...

I had a fibromyalgia client many years ago, when I was primarily doing massage. Each light touch elicited excruciating pain from her. She came twice and each time the session was hideously painful for her. (And it was no picnic for me!)

She was here from out of town visiting friends, and she returned home a few days after our last session. A couple of years later she came back and booked another appointment.

The massage felt really good to her (and to me!) this time. I asked her what had produced this remarkable change.

She said she'd worked with a Feldenkrais practitioner. In case you're not familiar with it, Feldenkrais technique is a type of movement reeducation based on Moshe Feldenkrais' observations of how the human structure really functions.

And then again...

I had a client who'd had a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis for five years. He became pain-free through some simple acupressure routines stimulating certain flows of energy. (See my "Sedating Dr. Strangelove" article in the Free Resources section of this website for the points I used.)

So What do all of these success stories have in common? They all look pretty different from one another.

Well, let's take a second look from an energy healer's point of view.

Why the psychodynamic approach works. At one level, emotion is quite literally an electromagnetic energy. The instinct of the mind is to stop emotional pain by not letting it come to consciousness. Paradoxically, though, by stopping the flow of emotional energy through the body, a temporary discomfort becomes a permanent physical pain.

The continuous flow of energy through the brain and the rest of the body encourages the flow of blood and oxygen as well. When the flow of energy stops, so does the flow of blood and oxygen, resulting in pain and all sorts of other distorted physiology.

When one of Dr. Sarno's patients accepts the relation between his or her physical pain and suppressed thoughts/emotions and is able to allow the suppressed material to surface, the energy flows again and the pain vanishes.

Why the physical realignment approach works.

When energy is constricted, muscles and joints become constricted as well. Your constrictions are expressed in your posture.

Just as constricted energy can affect the body, realigning and stretching the body through something like Feldenkrais or yoga can release the stuck energy. Sometimes, a memory or emotion will come to the surface when part of your body is released from its constriction.

The good news is that the relation between your energy systems and your body is a two-way street.

Why the energy system approach works. If you've been reading the past articles here, I hope that this one is a no-brainer! Working directly with your energy system has a profound effect on the body.

In other words...

Each of these approaches reestablished the flow of energy through the body.

But what if none of these approaches work for you?Environmental toxicity - or any other type of toxicity for that matter – is another way that chaos can be created in the body. And having the wrong kind of fuel for the body is a whole other type of stress on your body. In that case, working with a practitioner skilled in tools such as detoxification or nutrition would be the obvious primary path.

Even in that case, however, getting the energy system flowing can help move the process along, encouraging the flow of lymph and blood to support, nourish and detoxify the body. (Working with the neurolymphatics points is an extremely effective way to encourage this – see the Free Resources article called "Flushing Out the Toxins.")

Bottom line?

Just take your choice and choose your medicine! Whether you prefer an approach that focuses on the mind, the body or directly on the energy system - or any combination of the three - reestablish the flow of energy in your body.

It's the ultimate key to real relief and real healing.

Resources

The scope of this article allows only for the barest explanation of Dr. Sarno's work. The two books below give a full picture of his work:

By Dr. John Sarno:

The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
Healing Back Pain: the Mind-Body Connection

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